


Diva Dolorosa

by CourierNinetyTwo



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Crimson Flower endgame divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Post-Timeskip, Rhea has a few dragon traits but is mostly human
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-18 19:10:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20644223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CourierNinetyTwo/pseuds/CourierNinetyTwo
Summary: Rhea is a prisoner, and Dorothea is the key.





	Diva Dolorosa

**Author's Note:**

> For xekstrin! Also definitely took inspiration from this piece of fanart: https://twitter.com/shitheadsenpai/status/1158566081092435968?s=21

They imprisoned Rhea in the Goddess Tower.

It wasn't for poetry's sake, or irony. Hubert had discovered magical circuits embedded deep in the building's foundation days after the Empire's victory, and quickly repurposed them to prevent Rhea's escape—or any further transformation. 

Dorothea understood why Edelgard wanted to execute the archbishop, calling an end to Seiros and the church as a whole, but as she watched the dragon—Rhea, a _ dragon—_thrash in the coil of the Sword of the Creator, she felt a pang of sympathy. Impossible grief was the inescapable accompaniment to losing one's mother, and as Rhea suffocated under the burning collar of the blade, that grief sharpened to a keening note.

If anyone but Byleth had bid her to surrender, Dorothea was certain Rhea would have struggled to the bitter end. 

When she returned to human form, gaunt with hunger, branded around the throat, the hateful fire in Rhea's eyes was extinguished. All that remained were the ashes of desperation, failure's bitter kindling. 

They muzzled her. Initially, it was shocking to see the cage across Rhea's mouth, but her teeth were sharp enough to pluck her bottom lip now. Forcing the change under such stress had left the metamorphosis incomplete. Slit pupils remained in both verdant harlequin eyes, pointed ears cutting through the curtain of her hair.

Surprisingly, no other chains were needed. Perhaps the magic was truly that powerful, or the archbishop's humiliation so complete that the will to fight no longer remained, but as they restored Garreg Mach, its sole prisoner was little more than a sedate observer.

Although Edelgard offered an invitation to Enbarr with enduring gratitude, Dorothea decided to stay in the monastery. The orphans she watched over took comfort in the familiar walls, running through the gardens with such glee, it was almost as if there had never been a war at all. 

Almost, if not for Rhea.

Manuela was here too, keeping the infirmary open day and night to help the injured as they poured in from every corner of Fódlan. Lysithea stayed up until dawn with Hanneman more times than Dorothea could count, for her own sleeplessness made it hard to miss the candles on the second floor. She knew their research had to do with Crests, but both of them immediately changed the subject when asked for details.

Someone guarded Rhea. It was difficult to tell who, for Dorothea only ever glimpsed their shadow slinking around the tower. Yet the first night she approached the door at the bottom, no one emerged to stop her.

She hadn't picked a lock in almost ten years, but Garreg Mach was old enough that the mechanisms were simple. Dorothea slipped inside and closed the door with care, turning into the cold stone spiral of the stairwell. It was frigid enough to make her shiver, wrapping both arms tight around her stomach as she ascended.

At the top, where stone arches met in a vaulted ceiling, the lines of Rhea's cell were unmistakable. Just a few feet from the steps, orange bands of power glowed across the length of the floor, crossing over one another in a complicated sigil. A bed had been moved into one corner, along with a heavy cabinet that must have held Rhea's clothes.

In the opposite corner was a mirror with a half-torn sheet thrown over it. Despite the attempt at concealment, the sigil's glow revealed a thousand cracks in the glass, centered around a fist-sized crater. 

Rhea herself was on the floor, sitting with her legs crossed and hunched over a bowl. A spoon lay abandoned at her feet as she tilted the bowl up towards her mouth, cupping it awkwardly against the muzzle. 

Despite a clear effort, soup spilled through the lattice of the cage, splashing onto Rhea's chin as she tried to gulp down as much as she could. The rest of the broth stained her pale gown, dripping incessantly until the bowl was empty.

With a snarl, Rhea tossed the porcelain vessel. It struck the wall only inches from Dorothea's head and shattered, forcing her to clap both hands over her mouth to stifle a scream.

The ragged gasp behind her palms was loud enough to draw the archbishop's eye. Those _ eyes _, ancient and divine, wild with outrage. Yet that fire died too when recognition took hold, replaced by a shame seated so deep that Dorothea's own stomach twisted.

"What...are you doing here?" Rhea rasped. 

Her voice was a shadow of its former self, scraps of sound stitched together. It must have been days, if not weeks, since she had spoken aloud. The ragged pause between words gave Dorothea a chance to recover from the shock of nearly being struck, although it didn't provide an answer.

"I, well—" She had been curious, yes, but curiosity wasn't enough to make her pick locks and sneak around. That had always been done out of necessity, when every other attempt to seek food or shelter went unheard.

Seiros. Rhea was _ Seiros_. The truth was haunting after a life spent offering prayers to the Goddess, and months as a student of Garreg Mach, surrounded by statues of the saints.

“I wanted to understand,” Dorothea murmured quietly. “I wanted to understand who you really are.”

Guilt rose like a hot spike in her chest. Could there have been a way to stop all this from going so far? She remembered Edelgard’s frustration in a battle against the Alliance, wanting to know why those at such a clear disadvantage would fight to the bitter end rather than surrender to peace.

“You couldn’t possibly understand that.” Rhea rose to her feet in one sinuous movement, too fluid to be human. Now that Dorothea knew what lay beneath, it was too obvious to miss. “What I endured for centuries only to come to _ this! _Caged like a pet.”

Dorothea glanced at the shattered remains of the bowl. “Have you been eating like that this whole time?”

“Usually my guardian—“ Rhea spat the word like something foul, “—takes off the muzzle for meals. But when he needs to sleep, I have no other choice.”

She had a feeling said 'guardian' was none other than Hubert. Byleth had very publicly left with Edelgard to Enbarr, their impending nuptials drawing enough attention that no one would question the dark mage’s absence.

Dorothea rolled the next question around her tongue for a good minute, long enough for Rhea’s spite to simmer. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Green eyes narrowed until they looked cut in twain. “Did you come here to soothe a wild beast? I hear you singing almost every night from here.”

The accusation sent a hot flush across Dorothea’s cheeks. Manuela had affectionately teased her about volume once or twice, but she hadn’t imagined her sleepless arias could have reached the very top of the Goddess Tower.

“That depends if you want to be soothed,” she replied, aiming for a diplomatic tone.

She expected another outburst, but Rhea went disarmingly still. Dorothea wasn’t sure she was breathing until spying the beat of a stressed pulse in her throat.

“I want to hate you,” Rhea whispered, but then shook her head. “I want you to know how small and insignificant you would be if my kind hadn’t sacrificed everything to empower yours. I want you to know how much blood you stand in, even as we speak.”

Despite the harsh words, there was no violence in Rhea’s tone, only pain. Once she had finished, Dorothea dared to answer, “Far too much, but far less than you, archbishop.”

Whether from the title or the rebuke, Rhea winced. “Fair enough. I watched over you many a time, Dorothea, and war is the last thing you would relish.”

“Rhea.” Dorothea’s heart quickened; using the other woman’s name without a mark of respect felt like rebellious liberty. “It’s been a long time since you had anyone to really talk to, isn’t it?"

“I had Seteth until he fled. Flayn tried to comfort me before she left too.” Rhea swallowed the betrayal down, although it flashed in her gaze. “What I didn’t have was someone to—“

She fell silent, gathering her last slivers of pride and straightening her shoulders. Yet the vulnerability in Rhea's eyes remained, refusing to be banished. There was something she wanted, no, _ longed _ for. That sort of look was wholly reserved for longing.

"Someone to what?" Dorothea dared, and with that daring, she stepped inside the bright ring of the sigil.

Rhea's fangs pressed a centimeter into her lip. "It doesn't matter."

So she took another step closer, because Dorothea had a feeling she knew the answer. "Then I could leave right now, and it wouldn't matter at all to you?"

The archbishop's hands clenched into tight, strained fists. It had to hurt, for her nails were trapped as hard white points, edging on claws.

"I won't humiliate myself by voicing the possibility aloud," Rhea hissed. "I have been mocked enough by your kind! Do you know I can hear them chattering below the tower, speaking of me like some terror long dead, rather than the saint that protected humanity when they were merely beasts!"

Her voice began as a devastating boom, flush with power, but by the end she was shaking and breathing hard, volume swept away by exertion. Rather than face the loss, Rhea turned away from Dorothea to face her bed, arms wrapped tight as chains across her chest.

"And yet..." Her voice was barely a whisper now, and even Dorothea's well-trained ear had to focus to catch the syllables. "You are the only one I can ask, aren't you? Seteth is gone. Flayn is gone. Sothis—"

Rhea flinched from head to toe.

"Sothis is gone," Dorothea finished gently. "So what do you want from me?"

Rhea's high, proud head fell. Even through the seafoam spill of her hair, Dorothea could make out the straps of the muzzle buckled at the back of her neck, a violet rune keeping it locked shut.

"I want someone to touch me," Rhea uttered, ripped the words out from between her teeth like a broken sacrament. "I spent so long being _ holy_, the perfect icon, and what is my reward? This cold cell, cut away from the world."

Dorothea counted her blessings that Rhea was looking away, because the answer left her eyes wide, jaw dropping before she caught herself. For caution's sake, she cleared her throat to make sure the surprise didn't linger in her voice. "Touch you how?"

For some reason, that sparked a laugh. Bitter and small, but with a seed of amusement at its heart. Rhea looked back over her shoulder, face half-concealed. "Must I be so crude?"

_ Oh._ It was all Dorothea could do not to voice the sound aloud, although biting her tongue provoked a different effect. The pain was a distraction, but put in mind the image of Rhea's fangs doing much the same.

"No. I won't insult you by playing innocent." Dorothea knew she had a somewhat flirtatious reputation—it was tempered during the war, but she wouldn't deny her behavior or intentions—although Rhea's confession appeared entirely genuine. It wasn't a presumption; it was raw need. "But I'm surprised you'd be interested in me."

That made Rhea turn around completely, head tilted at a curious angle. "I could flatter you, Dorothea, but I think you're quite aware of how beautiful you are. Then again, that isn't the reason."

Dorothea frowned. "Then what is?"

"You're the first person to visit me. The first to even try." Rhea swallowed hard, shame plain. "I know you see a monster, but at least you do not act like it."

She opened her mouth to protest—Rhea had done monstrous things, although almost all of them had, in one way or another—but wondered if the distinction truly mattered. "I can give you what you want, but..."

The silence that followed was purposeful, a lure for Rhea's focus. "But?"

Her eyes narrowed as she hardened her voice, not wanting to leave even an iota of doubt in Rhea's mind. "If this is some sort of trick to break out of here, I will do everything in my power to make sure Hubie puts you somewhere you'll never get out of again. I won't be used. Not by you, not by anyone. Understand?"

Surprise was an interesting look on Rhea's face. It was so naked and unfamiliar that the expression took a moment to register, but also clarified the archbishop's intentions, which was all the proof Dorothea needed. "I confess, I feel like I already am using you. But it is not in an attempt to escape. That I swear." 

“You won’t use me because I’ll be the one in control,” Dorothea swiftly countered. Then she drew in a breath, recalibrating. She wanted to set boundaries, not pressure. "That is, if you're willing."

Rhea moved faster than Dorothea's eyes could register. Suddenly, she was an inch away; one trembling, hungry inch. Desire bled through her eyes like a primal force, enough to make a shiver slip up Dorothea's spine.

"_Yes_."

She took Rhea at her word. Their bodies pressed together, but she pushed back harder, directing the archbishop towards the bed. With the muzzle in the way, they couldn't quite kiss—a shame, Dorothea noted, because she had always thought the older woman had a beautiful mouth—but made do by trailing kisses down the notch of her jaw, then lower. 

Pale, powerful hands seized her bare shoulders, but there was no hostility in the grip. It was relearning the proper way to touch, every rigid stricture of sacred distance undone. The rough hold loosened, becoming a starved caress and searching out exposed skin. Rhea's nails scratched a path to the nape of Dorothea's neck, and she muffled a moan against the pulse in Rhea's throat.

"No breaking the skin," she cautioned, but tempered the words by smoothing her hands down Rhea's gown, seeking the swell of her breasts. "Can I take this off you?"

Another _ yes _ brewed low in Rhea's throat, more growl than language. Dorothea rucked the gown up with little ceremony, past the other woman's hips and over her head before tossing the sheath of white fabric aside. 

Rhea wore nothing underneath, and for a moment, the sight stunned her.

Flesh like marble was dappled with fine white scales, which flickered iridescent every time the archbishop moved. Her collarbones were sculpted lines, leading down to full breasts, soft and flush with their own weight. What looked like a scar of Seiros' symbol marked Rhea's sternum, but upon closer inspection, it was smooth ink, almost like a birthmark.

It wasn't Seiros' symbol. It was _ her _ symbol.

Despite her open admiration, Rhea’s attention was elsewhere. Both hands searched for the straps holding up her dress, and Dorothea encouraged the gesture with a soft murmur of, “a little lower.”

She scraped the buckle twice before working it loose. Dorothea let Rhea tug her dress down without protest, although she hissed in surprise as the cool metal of the muzzle briefly pressed against her throat. A grunt of frustration followed from the woman below, but whatever Rhea desired to do with her mouth, it was sublimated into her hands, sweeping over Dorothea's back like a brush on a fresh canvas.

"Tell me what you like," Dorothea whispered, then grazed her teeth down Rhea's throat.

The moan that came in answer was encouraging, as were the pinpricks of pain from Rhea's nails digging into her back. She nipped harder, marking a trail down Rhea's shoulder and collarbone. 

"I don't—" Speech seemed difficult for Rhea now; her hands clutched tighter against Dorothea's ribs. "I don't care. Everything. Give me everything."

'Everything' encompassed so much, but Dorothea took it as her cue to guide one of Rhea's breasts into her mouth, offering the other a firm squeeze. Rhea gasped, hips shifting, and Dorothea wedged one of her knees against the inside of Rhea's thigh to urge it wider, spreading her open. With her next breath, the heady scent of arousal poured over Dorothea's senses, and she shuddered.

Lithe muscle flexed underneath her, power coiled and barely contained. She rewarded the restraint with open-mouthed kisses across Rhea's breasts, teasing a nipple with teeth and tongue until it was hard and slick. Dorothea's hands smoothed along skin and scale alike, the taut plane of Rhea's stomach, and raked a set of pale pink lines over the swell of her hip.

"Tease," Rhea gasped, but it was a sound equal parts tension and delight.

"Do you think I want to rush with a woman like you?" Dorothea said, unable to banish the smile that rose to her lips. Oh, Hubert would be _ furious_, but he was also the one who had locked Rhea in a cold stone room with nothing except distant whispers for company. No one deserved that, not even her. "You're incredible."

Rhea was wicked too, but they all were. Here she was, mortal and dragging a god down to earth, reveling in her captured majesty. Dorothea's fingers followed the same path, exploring a thatch of damp emerald curls, lovely and untamed. They parted to reveal slick pink folds, each one swollen with need, full enough to press her clitoris up and out like an offering. In contrast to the pale mask of her skin, it was a passionate red, begging to be touched.

Tempting as it was to start there, she delved lower still. Those thicker folds spread under her touch, exposing the more delicate set underneath. Dorothea framed them with her fingers, drawing sticky strands of arousal this way and that across the tender ring of Rhea's entrance. The other woman's hips jerked forward, sharp and sudden, a hiss escaping from between bared fangs.

"Too much?" Dorothea asked, although she already knew the answer.

Draconian eyes flashed, desire burning through her gaze as pure primeval fire. "Not enough."

She played merciful by slipping a single finger inside. Rhea tightened around her, slick and hot, taut muscle trying to drew the digit deeper. Dorothea lingered, drinking in the sensation before she added another, just as slow. Cords of muscle flexed in Rhea's thighs, quivering like harpstrings waiting to be plucked.

It was easy to find a rhythm. Rhea set it for her with the firm push of her hips, too far gone to showcase anything but need. Dorothea moved in tandem, putting the weight of her body behind the thrusts, pleasure igniting at every point where skin met skin--fingers wet to the knuckle, thigh to thigh, breast to breast. She pressed her cheek against the muzzle, the metal almost warm as flesh now, heated by Rhea's ragged gasps.

"Can you take more?" Dorothea whispered, presenting the words like a kiss through the cage.

Rhea nodded, rubbed the curve of steel against her skin. "_Yes_."

She expected resistance with the third finger, the need for a slow stretch, but Rhea fit around her perfectly, tailored and silken. Dorothea moaned in sympathy, subtly curling her fingers, and drew an answering growl from low in Rhea's throat. Then she found her pace again, abandoning leisurely thrusts for something harder, deep and relentless. Rhea scratched new sigils into her back in turn; a heavy tang lingered on the back of Dorothea's tongue.

At first there was no goal but pleasure, contact. Sweat and breath, friction translated into bliss. It was a primal reckoning that persisted until Dorothea's wrist began to ache, right as Rhea hooked a leg around her hip to keep them as close as possible. She tightened around Dorothea's fingers, then let out a staggered, broken sound when Dorothea brushed against her clit with a firm sweep of her thumb.

"You're so close, aren't you?" She uttered the question against the wardrum-quick pulse in Rhea's throat, repeating the movement and capturing a louder moan. "I'm going to make you come."

It was impossible to keep the awe out of her words, but whether it was the tone or her fingers working in eager unison, Dorothea's next thrust brought Rhea over the edge. Every thread of tension unspiraled at once, chaos spent as her hips jerked, Rhea's head thrown against the pillows and completing the graceful arch of her back. She bared her teeth, keen and regal, eyes overwhelmed with vivid color.

Her descent was just as swift. The two of them lay in a tangle of limbs, gasping almost in sync. Aftershocks of release rippled around Dorothea's fingers, drowned in heat until she slowly withdrew them. Part of her was tempted to stay draped across Rhea's body, but she knew well enough that when the pleasure tapered off, that sort of sticky pressure would be uncomfortable.

So Dorothea rolled over onto her side, stretching out onto her back along far cooler sheets. The curve of her hip stayed pressed against Rhea's, and the archbishop herself looked almost sedated, eyes half-lidded, lips parted.

Perhaps it was the afterglow, but there was only one thing Dorothea could think to ask. "Do you want me to take the muzzle off?"

Rhea's eyes drifted open, a frown twisting her mouth. "The enchantment binding the straps is—"

"If you think there's a spell Hubert von Vestra can cast that I can't undo, you really don't know me at all, Rhea." Dorothea laughed softly. "But I won't do it if you aren't interested."

The archbishop blinked, and a spectre of that earlier surprise flashed across her face. "Of course I'm interested. Yet I'm shocked you'd trust me in such a way."

"You could have clawed my throat out with those nails of yours." She gestured for Rhea to turn over, and the other woman obeyed absent comment. "I don't think you'd wait just to use your teeth."

The rune holding Rhea's muzzle in place was obscenely powerful, but there was no more trick to it than that. Dorothea nearly laughed again, thinking of how faith empowered her magic, how logic could be undone in the bed of a saint. It sparked and fizzled under her touch, the leather straps parting of their own accord.

Rhea tugged the muzzle off the second it was loose, tossing it down to the foot of the bed. Then she turned over, meeting Dorothea's gaze with a curious look. "Do you not want me to reciprocate?"

Of course she'd considered it. Desire remained a steady beat between her thighs, but to ask an imprisoned woman to touch her after being given a meager degree of freedom didn't sit well with either mind or heart. Rhea had asked—nearly begged—to be touched, but Dorothea knew that didn't give her the right to demand the same.

"What I want is for you to be able to relax and enjoy this moment," she finally said aloud. "That's enough for me."

Rhea visibly paused, then nodded. "I see." 

"And perhaps the answer to a question, although I'm not sure if you're the one to ask." Dorothea murmured, turning her hand over and offering it to Rhea. The archbishop accepted her fingers, laced them together. "Why does Edie keep you here? I know Byleth wanted you alive, but..."

"But that is not reason enough," Rhea interrupted gently. "It is because in that moment, the Emperor saw past her anger and remembered who I was once. Not the archbishop, but the saint who slew Nemesis."

Dorothea's eyes widened. "She wants you to kill Those Who Slither in the Dark."

"I am the only one who yet lives and has accomplished such a feat." Rhea smiled, but it was a dragon's brutal grin. "Edelgard has yet to do so, and until Thales and the others are dead, I am the enemy of her enemy."

In a way it was impressive, how Edelgard managed to twist her foes' blades against each other, but the truth was that it meant more war would come, and Dorothea felt tired to the very depths of her soul. Even necessary war caused so much pain.

"I'm a spy, you know," Dorothea admitted softly. "A pretty tool of the Empire."

Even if she played other roles, there was no denying that espionage was one of them. Many nobles came to Garreg Mach to confess before the broken cathedral, and the children she watched over knew to listen for words that adults cast about carelessly. Hubert had been mildly alarmed when she made the offer, but accepted it without question.

"You're no one's tool, Dorothea Arnault," Rhea uttered the words with the aura of her once-mighty position, a bulwark of faith never to be questioned, "that I am sure of."

She had expected Rhea to be angry at her, to assume this visit was in some way a masterstroke, but the kindness disarmed her. It stripped her beyond the nudity of the present, transformed to sheer vulnerability. Tears rushed to the corners of her eyes.

Rhea pulled at their bound hands until Dorothea turned into her arms. They held each other in silence until more than a thousand heartbeats passed. She didn't want to leave; it felt cruel to abandon Rhea in the tower, although there was little alternative. Breaking her out would start a different sort of war, one where far too many could die for nothing.

So she sat up, searching for her dress, and Rhea mirrored the movement, albeit for a different reason. The archbishop picked up the muzzle, wiping off the inside of it with one of the sheets before fitting it to her mouth once more.

"You should seal this again," Rhea said.

Dorothea blinked, pausing with the dress in a collapsed sheath around her legs. "Are you sure? You could have a night without it."

A laugh spilled from those beautiful lips, framed by steel. "If you don't, I'll eat that dark mage alive next time I see him."

It was both threat and promise, so Dorothea sketched a new rune over the cross of leather. Much as he frustrated her, she didn't want to lose Hubert either. Rhea made no protest, and even helped Dorothea lace up her dress again, although the cut of it left the evening's activities undisguised. She would have to dig up one of her old jackets to cover them in the morning.

What was there to say that didn't feel hollow, or utterly mundane? "Good night, Rhea."

"Good night, Dorothea," she answered, but it seemed as if from a distance, the walls of her prison closing in once more, "sleep well."

She didn't sleep at all. Instead, she counted the marks on her back like a supplicant's lash, and for the first time in months, Dorothea decided to pray.

—

**Author's Note:**

> pour one out for Dorothea "only thorns left on this rose" Arnault


End file.
